A DC Portal at Woodrow Wilson Plaza

This summer, Shared_Studios will launch historic Portal connections between Washington, D.C. and select cities around the world. The final list is still to be determined, but likely locations include Herat, Afghanistan, Tehran, Iran, and Havana, Cuba.

From June 5 – 21, individuals in D.C. will be able to enter one-at-a-time and engage in 20-minute conversation with strangers abroad as if in the same room through Portals. Portals are gold shipping containers with immersive audio-visual technology inside. When you enter one, you come face-to-face with someone in another container live, full-body, and the two of you converse as if in the same room with real-time translation. As many participants have put it, “you feel as though you’re breathing the same air.” Participants will be invited to discuss the following prompt: “What would make today a good day for you?” Portals will be open seven days per week for five hours per day. Reservations for the Portal will open on Sunday May 31st at www.SharedStudios.com.